Chapter 8 #2
Sara and I were strolling along towards the back of the group, with Abbey and Annabelle trailing behind us, when my sweet little four-year-old decided to give me a heart attack.
“Hey Daddy, are you going to get married?”
I choked on my own spit, hating that my eyes immediately darted to the back of Sebastian’s head.
He was a few feet ahead of us, talking to Jet, his tattooed hands gesturing wildly.
I swallowed down the fondness rising in my chest at the sight of him with his dazzling smile, his bright eyes hidden behind his stupidly expensive sunglasses.
“No, sweetie. Not right now, anyway. Why do you ask?”
She looked up at me, a confused frown on her pale face. I glanced down at her, trying to keep my face blank. I didn’t want her to see I was panicking, because she’d always been an inquisitive child and I didn’t want her to think she couldn’t ask me questions.
“Sebastian is getting married. He’s going to have a wife,” she told me, rolling her eyes like I was being stupid.
I had to suppress a laugh – I know I shouldn’t encourage her to roll her eyes like that, but I can’t exactly tell her off for something I do all the time and I kinda get a little kick out of the little mannerisms she’s picked up from me.
“Yeah, he is,” I nodded. “Not everyone has a wife though, sweetheart.”
“They don’t?” Her little brow furrowed, and I could tell she was thinking it through with a laser like focus. “Shep is going to have a wife. Sebastian is going to have a wife. Kelly already has a wife.”
Oh shit.
I hadn’t realized, when I started telling people I was gay, that I would be telling my four-year-old daughter as well.
It wasn’t that I wanted to hide it from Sara, I was fully prepared to be honest with her, I just hadn’t realized it would be so soon.
She was four – but clearly, she was aware enough of adult relationships to understand that people got married.
She clearly wasn’t fazed by Kelly being married to another woman, so I knew she could grasp that people of the same gender had romantic relationships. That was a good sign, right?
“Well, you’re right, Sara. Some people have wives or want to have wives. But some people have husbands instead,” I began.
“Like Cinderella!”
“Sure, like Cinderella,” I agreed, nodding. I picked her up, settling her on my hip as we walked along so I could watch how she was reacting. This was a tricky conversation, I wanted to make sure I got it right.
“So…if you’re not going to have a wife, are you going to have a husband?” She asked, twirling a strand of my long hair, same shade of blond as hers, around her little finger.
“Maybe?” I replied quietly, ducking my head down to her – mostly to keep our conversation private and maybe a little because she’s been known to tug on people’s hair when she’s thinking.
“Sometimes people don’t get married at all, if they don’t want to.
But if I do get married one day, it will be to another man and he would be my husband. Does that…sound ok to you, sweetheart?”
“I guess so,” Sara shrugged her little shoulders before smiling up at me. “I’d like that, Daddy. Can I wear a fancy dress when you get married?”
“Of course you can,” I smiled back at her. “You can even wear your light up sneakers, if you want to.”
“Yay!”
Yeah, Sara was definitely the easiest person to have the coming out conversation with. In retrospect, I should’ve started with her. She was giggling and kicking her feet and I was smiling down at her when Sebastian fell into step beside us.
“Well what are we so excited about?” He asked, glancing between us with a delighted smile of his own. I wondered how much of that smile was because Sara was so giddy and excited. I wondered how much of that smile was because of me.
“My daddy might have a husband one day!” Sara told him, twisting at an almost unnatural angle to beam at him. “Like Cinderella.”
Sebastian looked from Sara to me, his grin deepening at the sight of what I’m sure was my panicked expression.
He raised one perfectly shaped brow, and I had to force away the urge to kiss that smug look off his face.
I could feel my cheeks burning. If I hadn’t been holding Sara, I would’ve begged the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
“That is very exciting!” Sebastian said, still grinning, although it softened into something warm and affectionate when he turned his gaze to me. “It’d be really cool for your daddy to have a husband one day.”
I tore my eyes away from his smiling face, unable to look him in the eyes when he was making even a passing reference to me marrying someone else.
I wasn’t even close to thinking about dating some guy, let alone getting married.
The only guy I’d ever seriously considered being with in any sort of capacity was engaged to a woman and telling my daughter that it’d be nice if I married someone else one day.
I tightened my grip on Sara to distract myself from the way my stomach had dropped to the soles of my feet.
Sebastian seemed to pick up on the change in my mood, while Sara was blissfully ignorant. She started yammering to him about another ukulele lesson, and he promised that he’d pop by before she went to sleep to give her another lesson.
“If that’s ok with your dad?” He directed that last bit at me, catching me off guard. I’d let my mind wander while they were talking.
“Yeah,” I nodded, plastering a smile on before Sara got suspicious. “That’s ok.”
Sebastian hesitated for a moment before smiling back at us both.
I forced myself to dig a bit deeper, try to make my smile genuine for him.
For Sara. It was foolish to be hurt by Sebastian hoping I got married someday.
It was a nice sentiment, came from a place of caring about my happiness.
Considering all the nasty things we’d said about each other in the years since our first entanglement, it was sweet that he wanted good things for me.
I wanted good things for him too, I did. I just didn’t know what those things were, anymore. That was the problem.
◆◆◆
I’d been so tangled up in my own thoughts that I completely forgot I’d told Sebastian he could come hang out with Sara until he knocked on our hotel room door at 7:30 that night.
“Who is it?” Abbey asked, glaring through the peephole. She’d already put a face mask on and heaven forbid anyone interrupt her skin care routine. It was a privilege to be allowed to witness it, really.
“Sebastian?” He replied through the door.
Abbey flung a surprised glance at me over her shoulder. I was lounging on my bed while Sara plucked carefully at the strings of her ukulele.
“Oh, yeah, I told Sebastian he could come over to give Sara another ukulele lesson,” I told her with what I hoped was a casual shrug. “I forgot.”
“You forgot that one of the hottest men in the world was going to be stopping by our hotel room right in the middle of my skincare regimen? You FORGOT?” Abbey demanded, the clay on her face starting to crack. I had to fight back a smile.
“Daddy’s silly,” Sara piped up, smiling .
“Daddy’s dead,” Abbey replied.
“I know I’m on the other side of the door but hearing Abbey call Max “daddy” is really creeping me out,” came Sebastian’s voice, only slightly muffled by the sound of the door.
“Let him in for chrissakes,” I laughed, shaking my head at Abbey’s pouting face.
“Sorry, Sebastian,” Abbey smiled pleasantly as she opened the door to the frontman of the most streamed rock band in the whole world. “Max didn’t mention you’d be stopping by, I would’ve held off on all this,” she gestured towards her clay covered face.
“Hey, I don’t mind. We’re all friends here,” Sebastian replied as he stepped into the room. Sara bounced off the bed and up into his open arms, squealing happily when he swung her up into the air.
Friends .
We could do that; I could do that. I could be his friend. Or die trying.
Or die at Abbey’s hands, whichever came first.
An hour seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, and before I knew it, Sara and Abbey were curled up in the other bed, both of them snoring softly with their hair in braids.
After Sebastian taught Sara the F chord, Abbey taught him how to braid Sara’s hair while I surreptitiously snapped a few photos of them being tooth-rottingly cute together.
“Do you know what we should do?” Sebastian asked from where he was lounging in the overstuffed seat by the window.
“Whatever you’re about to say, I’m sure it’s going to surprise me,” I answered, sitting up a bit straighter. He chuckled indulgently.
“We should perform “Musketeers” on this tour,” he said, leaning forward so he could really look at me.
With his elbows resting on his knees, his tattooed skin peeking out from the artful tears in his jeans and the glimmer of hope in his eyes, it was so easy to see the younger man he’d been five years ago when I’d first…
when we’d first fallen in love with each other.
Well, that was just a punch in the gut. I stared at him, knowing my mouth was probably hanging open in shock. I hadn’t been expecting that, at all.
“Watching you sing my song drives me fucking crazy,” he’d gasped as I shoved my hand down his pants.
We’d snuck around the back of the venue while the others played beer pong in the shitty green room. He was clinging to me like he was drowning, humming the chorus to “Musketeers” between breathless laughs.
“These pants drive me fucking crazy”, I countered, catching his mouth in a searing kiss.
“You drive me crazy,” he sighed, opening his eyes. They were so clear it was startling.
“Really?” I murmured, pressing my face into his neck so I could breathe him in. I could feel my cheeks burning, but he didn’t seem to mind. One of his hands drifted into my hair, tangling it around his graceful fingers so he could tighten his hold on me.
“When I’m with you, I feel perfectly sane,” I whispered to him. “For the first time ever, I don’t feel crazy.”
“Max?”
His voice, five years older and wiser and just as warm as I remembered it being, snapped me out of my daydream.
I had to force my eyes to focus, to look at him.
His brow was furrowed and he was nibbling nervously on his bottom lip again.
I let my gaze trip downwards, catching on his tattooed hands dangling carelessly between his knees. He’d always had the most elegant hands.
“Sorry, sorry,” I shook my head. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
He leaned back, the moment breaking with every inch of space he put between us.
My chest ached at the sight of him visibly recoiling from what I’d said, from what I was feeling.
I didn’t want to hurt him; I just wanted him to understand.
I couldn’t get up on a stage with him and sing that song with him.
“Why not?” He asked, pouting in a way I would’ve found adorable if I wasn’t in the throes of emotional turmoil.
Why not? When we’d performed “Musketeers” before, we’d been screwing around so getting close with him, sharing a microphone and having him kiss my cheek at the end, it was no big deal.
Feeling his arm curling possessively around my waist, his skin so hot that it almost burned to the touch, hell it’d been foreplay to us back then.
Seeing how much we could get away with, how far we could push it under the blazing lights and egged on by a roaring crowd, it’d been a game back then.
But I couldn’t play, not anymore. Not with my heart and not with his.
“It’d be weird, Sebastian,” I replied weakly, pushing my hands through my hair to try and hide the tremble in my fingers.
“Well sure, the first couple of times maybe,” he admitted with a gracious nod. “But we’d get past it. I think the fans would really love it. Plus, it ties into the whole theme of this tour, you know? We’ve…our bands have history together. The song is a big part of that.”
He wasn’t wrong and he knew it, smug son of a bitch. He was working hard to keep a grin off his face, that all-knowing grin. The song had been an important part of Burning Bright’s set, back in the day, and every crowd had gone crazy for it.
There was a stubborn glint in his eye that made it clear he wasn’t going to let it go.
I knew that glint, had been the victim of that glint more than once.
He hadn’t made it to the top of the charts by taking it easy and letting things just happen.
Sebastian was driven, always had been. Back when I’d been pretending not to like him, it’d been one of the things I could openly admit to admiring about him.
“I’ll think about it,” I conceded. There was an excited flutter in my stomach that betrayed my concerns.
“That’s all I ask,” he smiled, getting to his feet. “I should probably go. Let you think things over.”
He clapped an inked hand to my shoulder as he walked by, turning at the door to give me a jaunty salute.
“Think about it, Max,” he ordered as the door clicked closed behind him.
He knew I wouldn’t be thinking about anything else, that motherfucker.